what will they think of today's music?

Take 2 things that seem culturally equivalent-ish to us:   Taylor Swift and Coca-Cola.

If you could go back to Queen Elizabeth the First, say the 1580s, play some Taylor Swift and give the Queen a Coke, she would immediately assume that the Coke was some incredibly expensive nectar and fit only for royalty, while she would be completely flummoxed by the music.    Mind you, Swift's music is incredibly advanced and uses the most sophisticated production techniques, engineered and mastered by the best in the business, and she writes smart-sophomore-diary-poetic lyrics and catchy melodies and is a fine singer.    And yet QE I would likely demand that it be turned off immediately.    (While demanding more of that fizzy miracle drink.)

Now —– if you could have some of Swift's melodies played on lutes and recorders and sung by contemporary singers, she might indeed enjoy them.    But the actual music production itself?    She might not even begin to be able to make sense of it.

I mean, you have living adults in the modern age who still can't quite understand the groove of Beyonce's "Single Ladies," because they're a bit too old, and don't really have a shelf to put the rhythms and cadences on.    Much less the past, much less the distant past.

I've often thought that Willie Nelson's absolutely perfect song "I Never Cared For You" could have been written by a 12th-century troubadour.    The chorus's descending chord structure is basically a chaconne, and the lyric fits perfectly with the tone of much chivalric song.    Again, the electrified tremolo of the guitar might well confuse them but the song itself would go down nice and easy.    And even then, that electric guitar still sounds like some stringed instrument from a foreign land;   Willie's reedy voice sounds like some folk singer at a public-house;   it may all be juuuuust relatable to a medieval musician.

The famous opening riff of "Stairway to Heaven," likewise:   you could sit around with Vivaldi and play it and he'd dig it.    (Another chaconne-like, or at least passaciaglia-like, figure.)    The chorus… maybe not so much.

And think of all the stuff from the past that we ourselves just can't process.    Obviously, Haydn sounds all powdered-wiggy and classical and we get it —– but medieval motets?    Music by Ockegem?    The vast majority of music-lovers today would simply call it noise and turn it off.

Then there's old-new:   I challenge you to step into a Greek Orthodox church this coming Sunday, and try to make sense of the music they're singing in there.    All these old ladies effortlessly singing songs with key signatures of two flats and two sharps!!!    Or go to Asia.   Some Japanese and Chinese folk music sounds just like Appalachian folk music or hymns from the Sacred Harp:   stolidly pentatonic.    But some music from those lands sounds so weird to us, living right now alongside it, that most of us simply couldn't make sense of it.

Back to QE I:   play the Beatles' "Revolution #9" for her, and she might assume it's some mad nightmare.    But play "Norwegian Wood," even in the original recording, and she'd swallow it immediately.    That song could have appeared in a Shakespeare play right alongside "The Wind and the Rain."

This has been a series of thoughts, with no introduction or conclusion.    You're welcome, and I'm sorry.